That was...aggressively poor leg design. No bunching, a (meaningless) Yield and an Intersection combine to make it such that Russ/Tarryn had no chance and in fact, given the structure of the previous leg, the team that was last would probably have been eliminated.

Firstly, that soap task was just extremely stupid, beyond pointless, and a waste of five minutes of my life. (Although I did like how Sticky & Sam wanted to swap partners with Michelle & Jo. )

The two Detour tasks were of ridiculously different difficulties. The shoe-shining was simple and easy and requiring a relatively small amount of time and effort, whereas the carpet search was timely, extremely detail-oriented, and highly unsuitable to be paired up with the shoe-shining. I don't like it when the two Detour tasks are of very different difficulties. It ruins the purpose of a Detour.

The Yield was quite pointless as well, and the team who was most disadvantaged by the Yield turned out to be the team who used the Yield!

The oil wrestling thing was relatively fun to watch, but it seemed too dangerous a task for my taste. Michelle got injured and I'm quite surprised that there weren't more injuries, in all honesty. Those guys seemed keen to attack.

The Roadblock was pretty pointless, too. It was better than some of the other tasks for cultural relevance purposes, but it was not difficult and had no skill involved, preventing any chance for teams to gain or lose significant periods of time.

The Intersection is a twist that I absolutely LOVE <333 BUT it was placed in the most awful place imaginable! I mean it basically condemned the team who was MFE to go home. Any lead that Ross & Tarryn were able to develop in the previous tasks would be abolished, and they would go home regardless, because there is no way that they could make up 30 minutes on James & Sarah at the Roadblock, which was a task that gave very little room for movement.

Horrid leg design. Tasks were below mediocre. Once again, this episode is a case of the cast making it more awesome than it actually was. I am quite disappointed with this episode. Definitely my least favourite of the season, by a long way.

And OMG at Lucy & Emilia being one spot away from the Top Half! <333

I hope that France brings more excitement next week! The preview looks interesting! Grace stealing Sarah's cab or something! I hope it's a very good episode next week, because it's gonna be airing on my 18th birthday, so I'm quite excited about it! <333333

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1. Don't pick up the phone - You know he's only calling 'cause he's drunk and alone.2. Don't let him in - You have to kick him out again.3. Don't be his friend - You know you're gonna wake up in his bed in the morning.And if you're under him, you ain't gettin' over him. ♥

That was...aggressively poor leg design. No bunching, a (meaningless) Yield and an Intersection combine to make it such that Russ/Tarryn had no chance and in fact, given the structure of the previous leg, the team that was last would probably have been eliminated.

The tasks were good though.

I'm usually a big fan of the odd linear leg so the teams that work to the front of the pack get a reward for it, but straight after a non elimination like that seems to defeat the purpose. I'm beginning to think that it was originally intended to be a superleg, but because of the delayed flight into Istanbul they had to force teams to wait for 12 hours at the Pit Stop so they'd be racing in daylight.

It just seems really strange to me that they'd build a leg with the Yield and Intersection on top of a marked for elimination penalty on the leg immediately after one with a Roadblock that seems to have been designed to be conducive to quitting the task. Where was the opportunity for Ross and Tarryn to make up the 30 minutes needed? Unless the producers thought the spinning task was going to be a lot harder than it seemed?

I agree with everyone above, the leg was poorly designed; the yield was a waste, and having the yield, intersection and elimination penalty in play in one episode seemed a bit much. The leg was very linear and the lack of a bunching point of a really hard challenge meant that the eliminated team was always going to be Ross & Tarryn. This is off topic, but I kinda wish TARAus would use speed bumps instead of the elimination penalty.

I'm a bit bummed that Gallipoli wasn't used as a location. I don't really buy into the jingoism behind Gallipoli, but I think it would've been the perfect opportunity to give TARAus something unique to itself.

I definitely agree with howie_2010 that TARAus should use Speed Bumps. It's my favourite NEL penalty, and even though most Speed Bumps in the US TAR series have been borderline abysmal, I still like the idea of the Speed Bump over the MFE penalty.

Honestly, I wasn't expecting Gallipoli today, because I think that if they did visit Gallipoli, it would have been all over the promos for this week. It would've been a good location though.

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1. Don't pick up the phone - You know he's only calling 'cause he's drunk and alone.2. Don't let him in - You have to kick him out again.3. Don't be his friend - You know you're gonna wake up in his bed in the morning.And if you're under him, you ain't gettin' over him. ♥

I personally believe the producers just put the Yield just to mentally torture the racers, just the way it happened:"Ha! You Yielded the second place team? Now wait for them and see if they want to work with you..."

I personally think the design would have worked well enough had there been no quitters in the previous leg, or more than two.

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The Roadblock was pretty pointless, too. It was better than some of the other tasks for cultural relevance purposes, but it was not difficult and had no skill involved, preventing any chance for teams to gain or lose significant periods of time.

Oh I disagree, I thought this was the best task of the episode. It was better than just walking through a room with them in it to receive the next clue.

Also, regarding the preview: (100% based off the preview. I don't read spoilers, it's just in spoil tags in case you don't want to see episode predictions.)

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It made a big deal about going to Paris, but then it also shows things that had to have come from Cuba. Why are they even going to Paris then? I can't imagine that they'll just skim over a city of that size. Maybe there's just Che Guevara stuff in France for some reason.

Agreed with most all of the comments here, kept thinking: What's the point of a yield/intersection design like this.. So either it was indeed poor design after things went differently than expected, but in that case it's kind of odd they didn't have a plan B or didn't see this coming in combination with the NEL/MFE of the previous leg.

I'm starting to think these twists are there more to create drama's and frictions rather than actual twists that make a difference in the order of the teams - especially since some of the tasks have little to do with showing some skill/patience etc.

I did enjoy the tasks for what they were for the most part, though tbh stacks of carpets vs 10 pairs of shoes to shine is a pretty simple choice, even on paper I'd say. It does seem a bit out of balance but you see that in the US TAR happening too, where almost all teams end up doing one over the other because it's far quicker.

I did enjoy watching the episode but mostly because there weren't any real drama/annoying moments and the teams all seemed to be in relative good spirits which was good for some amusing moments. Especially with the sisters being over the moon of some Turkish men.

Maybe also because I love Turkey and the Turkish people in general, been there so many times so I just have a bit of a bias there maybe just for seeing it.

Not too sad to see the father/daughter couple go, they had their run and as has been said before, didn't match up to the rest of the teams. And as I mentioned before some people really still need to make that switch and realize this IS after all a race. Being civil is fine but on the other hand, some people still don't seem to realize this enough. There is such a thing as too laid back as well.

The preview was confusing indeed. 'The biggest leg yet' - I wonder if they mean it's two episode leg maybe? i.e. keep on racing?Otherwise the bits of Cuba make no sense to me because it would be a very brief stop over in Paris, indeed.

Still entertaining enough to keep me watching, but yeah the awful leg design does annoy me to some degree, because it has too much of an effect.

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The preview was confusing indeed. 'The biggest leg yet' - I wonder if they mean it's two episode leg maybe? i.e. keep on racing?Otherwise the bits of Cuba make no sense to me because it would be a very brief stop over in Paris, indeed.

I doubt it - Grant definitely said there were twelve legs this season at the start line (and we know from last year the two-part leg is counted as two legs), and that Istanbul was the first of two non-elims. Add in the Salvage Pass leg and there's no room for a TBC.

The other issue is apparently the UK was confirmed as a country at the launch party, which would mean we have to go from Turkey to Paris to London (or wherever, but probably London given the new Tower Bridge shot in the credits) to Havana in the space of a leg. Especially considering we know there's at least one task in Paris at Le Cordon Bleu (plus probably whatever's going on with the trucks and shipping containers or whatever it was), it doesn't seem likely. I think the editors just stuffed up.

I believe so. I just figured it was in the gap between the flight from Havana and the Vancouver spoiler - I can't imagine there's too many flights between Cuba and the US, so maybe Toronto was just the best place to connect.

I've also heard this is another 12-country route. So Australia, the Philippines, India, the UAE, Turkey, France, the UK, Cuba, the US, Canada, China... we're still missing one. Maybe Thailand or Malaysia on the way down from Beijing, like Singapore last year?

Next year, I hope they pick some less obvious countries. Not that the routes they've picked these last two seasons have been bad, but... they're such obvious countries (and for the most part obvious cities in those obvious countries). I realise there's a whole lot of the world they can't go to, but why not do, for example, Malta instead of Italy, or Wales instead of England?

The Roadblock was pretty pointless, too. It was better than some of the other tasks for cultural relevance purposes, but it was not difficult and had no skill involved, preventing any chance for teams to gain or lose significant periods of time.

Oh I disagree, I thought this was the best task of the episode. It was better than just walking through a room with them in it to receive the next clue.

It was the best task of the episode in my opinion too, but I didn't like most of the tasks. The Roadblock would've definitely worked a lot better and been a lot more enjoyable if it wasn't for the awful leg design!

Logged

1. Don't pick up the phone - You know he's only calling 'cause he's drunk and alone.2. Don't let him in - You have to kick him out again.3. Don't be his friend - You know you're gonna wake up in his bed in the morning.And if you're under him, you ain't gettin' over him. ♥

Situation in which this leg could have worked, i.e. yield not wasted whatever.#1 assume no teams quit in the previous leg but one team is still marked for elimination.#2 let's say the last four teams all depart pretty close together.#3 also assume that the MFE team is in a strong alliance with one of the other teams of our 4 and that alliance team is departing first of the four#4 alliance team yields second last team, MFE moves into second last place#5 if all teams move through the detour taking the same amount of time (they all choose the same detour or some bizarre coincidence) alliance team and the other team arrive at the intersection first.#6 alliance team refuses to work with the other team, waits for MFE. the other team will have to wait for the yielded.#7 MFE is now in third last place and can try to scramble their way through the rest of the leg

other possible scenarios include MFE lucking through the carpet detour in a very short time, another team struggling badly at either the detour or roadblock, hell even medical emergency.

that's the thing with this game, there are too many variables to really predict anything. The point of my seemingly pointless ranting? It is not right to say the leg design screwed Ross and Tarryn or whoever the MFE team turned out to be, Ross and Tarryn screwed Ross and Tarryn when they quit the roadblock. Their elimination reinforces for me the mentality that it is far better to take a break than to quit. Yes that roadblock was nightmarish and hellishly difficult (40,320 possible combinations, 0.0025% chance of guessing the answer) but even if Ross had taken an hour break and then returned to the task to try again and somehow got it (let's say he uses whatever his equivalent of aura spray is) he would have departed earlier than he would have after having quit.

I think the UK and US could be counted as "visited" but were probably just transit points.

I think a similar thing happened with season 19, teams only transited through germany (well i think there was one clue box, but is take a train really a task?) and the netherlands but i believe both were required to complete the final map roadblock.

The preview was confusing indeed. 'The biggest leg yet' - I wonder if they mean it's two episode leg maybe? i.e. keep on racing?Otherwise the bits of Cuba make no sense to me because it would be a very brief stop over in Paris, indeed.

I would not underestimate the potential brevity of a destination, in the first season both ho chi minh and the netherlands both only hosted one challenge before teams moved on by plane or train.

My random question for this episode: how long do you think Lucy and Emiliownage were waiting for the cops at the intersection?

I haven't seen this episode yet, but when I was reading Coutzy's commentary, I was hoping that Sticky and Sam would arrive at the intersection about the same time as Michelle and Jo. Deciding to work together, they would leave Paul and Steve waiting for the fourth team. That would have been epic.

I haven't seen this episode yet, but when I was reading Coutzy's commentary, I was hoping that Sticky and Sam would arrive at the intersection about the same time as Michelle and Jo. Deciding to work together, they would leave Paul and Steve waiting for the fourth team. That would have been epic.

If only there is a team trailing the twins and the girls know it, it would be epic, leaving Paul and Steve waiting for the fourth team. It would appear like the twins Yielded them in a different way. The fourth team will be GraJo and still prefer to wait for another team than working with Paul/Steve. Though, never seen an intersection like that even with enemies teaming up.

I haven't seen this episode yet, but when I was reading Coutzy's commentary, I was hoping that Sticky and Sam would arrive at the intersection about the same time as Michelle and Jo. Deciding to work together, they would leave Paul and Steve waiting for the fourth team. That would have been epic.

If only there is a team trailing the twins and the girls know it, it would be epic, leaving Paul and Steve waiting for the fourth team. It would appear like the twins Yielded them in a different way. The fourth team will be GraJo and still prefer to wait for another team than working with Paul/Steve. Though, never seen an intersection like that even with enemies teaming up.

IIRC, Dustin/Kandince were pretty close to skipping over Chala/Mirna at the intersection. I remember D/K hiding and discussing whether it was worth waiting for another team before they decided it was a bad idea and grabbed C/M. This hilarious leg also included Eric's "Miss California!(?)" quote

Good points: Some of the tasks where reasonably interesting and physical (I like them daring to put a tough physical challenge in). Made for some drama with the twins. Some humour mixed in from the racers along the way and while some may not like that I do.

Bad points: It was processional, tasks seemed pretty short except for the detour.Both yield and marked for elimination I find pretty boring as they are without tasks and are just time penalties, and so provide little entertainment. So I don't know why the Australian version is bringing them back.The whirling dervish task was judged generously and that's an understatement.